CHAPTER 18.

A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.

Granny taught me right from wrong.

I didn't have a father or a mother around, and I didn't pay a lot of attention to teachers, ministers, or United Nations ambassadors. I hung around Key Largo and Islamorada with the kids from the trailer parks. Their idea of fun was to throw rocks at tourists' cars coming down U.S. 1, maybe jimmy Coke machines in their spare time. Their dads-the ones who had them-worked on shrimp boats or road crews, if they worked at all.

For a mentor, it was either Granny or the guys who loafed at the 7-Eleven on Little Pine Road, the place I started drinking beer when I was about Kip's age.

Thank God it was Granny.

She taught me not to cheat, not to steal, and not to hit anyone who hadn't hit me first. She taught me to avoid cruelty in words and deeds. She taught me that black and brown folks were as good as white folks, and many times, a damn sight better.

And when I was a little older, she taught me never to raise a hand to a woman. "Only the lowest kind of trash hits his woman, and don't you fergit it. Only a sniveling weakling, a bottom-feeding gutter rat will ever strike a woman, and no Lassiter ever done it or ever will. You understand?"

I told her I did, and if I ever saw a man abusing a woman, I'd step in and put an end to it right then and there.

"Another thing, too, Jacob. No real man ever forces a woman to do what she don't want to do. A woman who don't want to be touched is not to be touched."

I understood that, too. The thought of a man doing violence to a woman, any woman, is repellent to me. The thought of it happening to Jo Jo Baroso filled me with rage.

Another memory came back to me on the drive past Woody Creek. In my first year as an assistant public defender, I was handling domestic violence cases. One of my first clients was a grinning yahoo who had tossed a frying pan filled with sizzling bacon at the woman who lived with him. The grease left a ridge of scar tissue from one eye diagonally across her nose to her upper lip.

"Bitch deserved it," he told me, a cigarette flapping out of the corner of his mouth. "If I told her once, I told her a hundred times to have two six-packs in the fridge, cold and ready. A man comes home from pouring tar on roofs in August, a man is thirsty. She's there making BLTs and she says, 'Sorry, honey, there's only one can left, but you took the car, and I couldn't carry beer, what with the eggs and bread and what all.' So I chugged the can, smashed the empty on her forehead. Bitch just smiled at me, so hell, I picked up the frying pan."

Then he grinned, looking for approval from his state-appointed counsel. Just a couple of guys who understand you have to smack them around once in a while, let them know who's boss.

I'm not real proud of what I did. He was small and wiry and sun-browned from his outdoor work, with a creased face and dumb, blank eyes. He was expecting to cop a plea, maybe get probation, go out drinking with the boys, brag about teaching the bitch a lesson. He wasn't expecting his lawyer to be crazed on the subject of men beating women.

"I'd like you to put out your cigarette," I told him.

He looked around. "Don't see no ashtray."

"I want you to swallow it," I said, placidly.

He gave a nervous little smile, wondering if I was joking. I let him wonder a moment, then came around my desk and yanked him out of his chair by the scruff of his neck. The cigarette fell from his mouth, but I caught it, remembering even now the singe of hot ash in the palm of my hand. His eyes were wide and fearful. I let go of his neck, and with one hand, pinched his jawbone hard, forcing his mouth open. Then, I jammed the cigarette in, hit him under the chin to close his mouth, and yanked back on his neck to tilt his head toward the ceiling.

"Swallow!" I yelled at him. "Swallow, you worthless piece of slime."

I watched his Adam's apple work the butt down his throat, then I let go of him.

The punk filed a complaint, and I was suspended for a month without pay, forced to undergo psychiatric testing, then counseling, then a program called Alternatives to Violence, which, ironically, was intended for abusive husbands and boyfriends. When I came back to work, I was reassigned to zoning cases, where I defended a Santeria priest for sacrificing live goats in neighborhoods usually reserved for drug deals.

It was years later in private practice that I crossed paths with another of those cowardly cretins. This one was a yellow-haired, blue-eyed devil in a padded-shoulder, double-breasted suit, a guy Granny would say considered himself the last Coke in the desert. He was a rich man's son, driving a Porsche, living in a high rise on the Intracoastal, sharing his chrome and glass bachelor pad with a flight attendant who eventually grew tired of his two-timing. When she moved out, the blond boy's ego was hurt, and he asked her to return his Christmas presents. She thought he was joking-the presents were the crowns on her front teeth-but he took them back anyway. With pliers.

"Can we, like pay a fine, and go home?" he asked, slouching in the cushioned client chair in my office.

I couldn't help it, but I kept looking at his smile. "You have nice teeth."

"Huh?"

"They all real?"

"Yeah, sure. What of it?" He self-consciously licked his lips and forced the smile closed.

"Does it bother you when I look at your teeth?"

He shook his head and shot nervous glances around the office. Except for a full-size cardboard cutout of Joe Paterno, we were alone.

"Nice teeth," I repeated.

I riffled some papers, finding the A-form and the dentist's report. "Two incisors, two canines, upper and lower. Eight in all. That right?"

"Huh?"

"The crowns you repossessed."

"Yeah, I guess. I dunno. What difference does it make? I mean, how much is it going to cost?"

"Eight teeth," I said, and then I counted aloud from one to eight, trying to imagine the pain and the terror he had caused. He watched me as if he had a lunatic for a lawyer. He did.

"Stand up, shithead!" I ordered him.

"What?" Confusion. The beginning of fear.

"A tooth for a tooth."

He bolted from the chair and started for the door. I jumped up, danced around my desk, caught him by a shoulder and spun him around. He screamed before I could slug him, and the sound, a high-pitched girlish squeal, threw me off. I swung high, glancing an overhand right off his nose, which nonetheless squirted blood and closed his eyes. The next shot was on target. I came up from below with a left that connected flush on his mouth, splitting his upper lip and breaking off two incisors right at the gum line. I felt a stinging in my hand and looked down to find the teeth embedded in my knuckles. I still have tiny scars to prove it.

He was wailing, blood pouring from his nose and gurgling from his mouth, and looking far worse than he was.

"Six more to go," I told him, but by now, my office door had flown open, and crowding inside were three of my partners, my secretary, a paralegal, and, mouth agape, the general counsel of an insurance company we were trying to woo. I decided to regain some sense of decorum, so I chose that moment to extract the two teeth from my knuckles and toss them into my wastebasket where they ping-pinged to the bottom.

"My client," I said to the crowd, as if that somehow explained everything. Then I turned to the insurance company lawyer, trying to salvage the moment. "You ought to see what we do to the opposition."

So it was not without some history that I approached the ranch of K. C. Cimarron this cool summer night in the high country.

Light spilled across the countryside from a three-quarter moon. Cattle stood motionless in fenced fields, and as we slowed for a curve, a deer bolted in front of our headlights, prancing out of our way. We followed the dirt road as it wound toward the Red Canyon Ranch. I parked the car outside the gate, pulling off the road into some sagebrush, where we began walking the mile or so to the barn. By daylight, the barn was a faded red. At night, it was the black maroon of dried blood.

"Kip, there's a lesson about life I need to give you now, I hope you'll remember as you get older."

"Oh brother."

"Listen up. You never strike a girl. Never. You never touch- "I know, Uncle Jake. Granny told me all that."

"Already?"

"Yeah, plus, I shouldn't cheat or steal or say nasty stuff."

"You got the whole course. Anyway, I'm glad you're here. I want you to videotape Jo Jo."

"For my movie?"

"No, for evidence. I'll interview her on tape. I want visible proof of her injuries. It'll help prosecute Cimarron and might help in my defense if he claims I assaulted him."

"Are you going to pick a fight?"

"I'm going to tear him into little pieces."

"Uncle Jake."

"Yeah?"

"He's too big. He's the only man I know who's bigger and stronger than you, and in the mean department, he's got it all over you."

"Don't underestimate your uncle when he's all angered up," I told him.

The barn door was open, and inside, in the darkness, I could make out the shadows of horses in their stalls, a saddle sitting astride a railing, bales of hay silhouetted against a corncrib by the moonlight streaming in a window. Kip reached for my hand and stayed close. I was aware of the sound of my breathing, of the rumbling exhalation of one of the horses, the caw of a nighttime bird in the distance.

"Nobody's here, Uncle Jake," Kip whispered. "Shhh."

A few more steps. Then, "Jake. Is that you?"

It was her voice, coming from above.

"In the loft. Up here." She flicked on one of those lanterns that runs off a nine-volt battery but is made to look like an old kerosene lamp.

I scrambled up the ladder to the loft, Kip right behind me. Jo Jo was huddled in a corner, wrapped in a blanket. Her face was smudged with tear-streaked dirt. Her eyes were puffy. The beginning of a bruise was apparent on one cheek, and an angry red scratch was visible on her neck.

I crouched down next to her and reached out, but she dug herself deeper into the corner like a frightened animal. When I gently touched her cheek, she trembled.

"Jo Jo. I'm here for you."

"Oh, Jake, you shouldn't have come. And the boy, what's-"

Kip was already shooting, using the hand focus ring, rather than the automatic. "Light's a little low," he said, "but this lens has tremendous sensitivity. Plus, the mike is incredible. This baby can pick up a rat farting at fifty yards."

"No, Jake, please. I'm so ashamed. The boy shouldn't be here."

"Uncle Jake, please, you're cutting off the angle." The temperamental director was pouting. "I want to zoom from medium close up to extreme close up."

"Jake, no! Haven't you done enough to me already?"

Now what did that mean? I was trying to help her. She seemed on the edge of hysteria. I turned to my nephew. "Okay, Kip. Cut! I've got enough."

He shrugged and clicked off the camera.

"Now, head back down the ladder and wait until I come get you."

He frowned but took off.

Jo Jo huddled under the blanket, and when I reached for her hand, she let go. The blanket fell away, revealing bare shoulders and breasts.

"He threw my clothes in one of the filthy stalls and told me that sluts sleep with the horses. He was so hateful, so ugly. Oh, Jake, I've made such a terrible mistake coming back here. I knew from before what he was like. It's almost like he has a split personality. He can be so good, so kind and caring, and then, if something goes wrong with a claim or the leases, he becomes ...I don't know...irrational, unhinged, violent."

"I'll take care of him, but first I want to make sure you're all right."

I moved close to Jo Jo, and she wrapped her arms around me, the blanket slipping farther away, her breasts pressing against me.

"Oh, Jake. I must smell like a horse."

"Hush. You're as beautiful and sweet and precious as the day we met."

"Mi angel. So long ago. I've changed so much."

"No you haven't. Maybe you're not as sure about everything as you were then, but that's natural. The young know it all."

She was crying again. "I was always too hard on you. I shouldn't have tried to change you, but I could never accept things the way they were. It was the same with Luis."

I pressed my face against hers, and her arms tightened around my neck. I kissed her, softly, and her lips yielded, and for a moment it seemed her breathing had stopped, but then she sighed, a long vast release of tension, and her body molded itself to mine.

I reached out and clicked off the lamp. Shafts of moonlight filtered into the loft through cracks in the plank walls of the loft, dust motes rising in the creamy glow. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, and the chilly nighttime breeze made the old barn groan and shudder.

And crack.

The sound startled me. Like the rung of a wooden ladder splintering under a heavy foot.

I sat up, and Jo Jo gasped, clutching at the blanket. Another sound, maybe the shuffling of feet. In the darkness, I couldn't pin down the direction. I rolled to one side, grabbing the lamp, and came up in a crouch, keeping my back to the wall. I flicked on the lamp, blinked and looked around.

Nothing but shadows.

And a voice. "That's better. Natural light just wasn't doing it."

I looked up. In the rafters above the loft, Kip was aiming his video camera at the two of us.

"Out of here, Kip! Now!"

"Okay, okay, I don't want to lose my PG-13 rating, anyway.

He scrambled down from the rafter and climbed back down the ladder. I turned out the light again.

"Just hold me, Jake," Jo Jo said.